DAY FORTY-FOUR: WINDSOR

A few days ago, or maybe it was four years ago, I was sitting on a 16-seat Mercedes bus pulling out of Grasmere -- Wordsworth country.  It was a blustery and cloudy sort of day, the kind that usually waits for October to show up, but here it was in August.  We'd just finished lunch and loaded back up into the bus and I was looking out the window, watching the tiny village flash by, when I was hit by one of those weird nostalgia/melancholy/deja vu/longing feelings.

You may think that the only things I love in this world are Sandra Bullock, our jawa, Shack, the Golden State Warriors and my sisters, but I also love the feeling you get when it's blustery and a little bit gloomy, and you're walking down the street in late afternoon kicking leaves out of the way, not wishing it was sunny and warm at all and knowing that soon you'll be inside and warm and maybe hanging out with a bunch of people you really like.  It's a feeling that's rare where we live, even rarer where I grew up, but available in bulk in the mountains, in the Northwest, definitely in Pennsylvania when you go there to visit your son in college in November.  That's the fleeting feeling I had sitting in the bus, pulling away from Wordsworth turf, and it wasn't earned but it was pretty strong, enough that it almost started to feel like a separate person sitting there with me.  It reminded me of so many things that I miss, some of which don't even actually exist.

That was the moment I decided it was time to go home.

Bath: the antidote for vacation fatigue.

I figured at that point I'd be counting down the last few days, waiting for that sweet moment when our plane touched down at SFO and we could again get on with the business of living our normal lives.  But then something weird happened; we got back in that infernal Volvo and began driving, and by the time we got to Chipping-Campden, I'd found my second wind.  So much so that this morning, while we searched the gorgeous streets of Bath in vain for one more scone (we finally found it in a place directly across the street from our hotel after an hour of sort of searching, sort of wandering), I started to feel a little panic that this grand adventure, this 45-day epic, was coming to an end before I was ready.

Fortunately, an overnight stop in Windsor, chosen by me months ago for its proximity to Heathrow Airport -- I was trying to recreate the awesome bonus days we got during two earl trips by choosing for our last night strange, airport adjacent small towns outside of Munich and Milan, little mini vacations-within-a-vacation that left us feeling complete and satisfied as we boarded our return flights -- has provided balance, leaving us both with a sense that, while we could foresee this trip continuing on into perpetuity, we feel just as strongly that it's time to get home.

Back to Rick Steve's mode:

Windsor is famous for one reason: it's the site of Windsor Palace, "the Queen's official residence," per an excited Sandra Bullock.  She pre-booked our palace tickets before we even left Bath.  Windsor Palace is "the only thing to do in Bath," says Rick Steves, which dissuaded 100,000 people in a big hurry to get themselves in front of me while getting off the train this afternoon not one iota.  

They came by train, they came by bus, they came by car.  They came carrying children, backpacks and soft serve ice cream cones, all for one thing: to see the palace.

And they did  They saw the palace apartments, which are admittedly pretty cool and left me wondering if the Royal Family still actually uses rooms like the very ornate one where people are supposed to hang out while waiting to see the queen, or if any of the King's

"What ride do you want to go on first?"

chambers are used, since there's (technically?) no King of England right now.  If you told me that William and Kate took one look at this stuff and said, "Uh, no thanks, we look at this stuff and can't figure out where on earth we'd lounge around and watch 'Big Little Lies.'" I would believe you completely.

They came to climb the tower, which cost an extra nine pounds and probably affords incredible views from the top.  We'll never know, because we're almost out of cash and didn't want to take out a card just to climb up some stairs.  

They came for the entire thing -- a massive complex of buildings, including the chapel where Harry and Meghan got married.  You can literally walk in their footsteps, down the aisle where they paraded past global dignitaries before (reportedly) heading off to Africa for their honeymoon.  It's vast and breathtaking, too much so for a commoner like me, who'd probably opt for something a little more manageable should he someday return as Royalty.  If my sister someday fulfills her destiny and is reclaimed by the Kennedys, who obviously left her on my parents' doorstop in a bassinet one morning in 1962, why can't I still have a shot at someday becoming Royalty?  Time to do my 23 and Me, I guess.

In 2018, 1.44 million people visited Windsor Palace.  Each of them paid somewhere

Official Royal Family corgi mask.

between 16 and 22 pounds to enter, depending on age, and another nine if they wanted to take the tower tour.  That works out to around 40 million pounds earned by the palace just for being there, plus whatever it can make selling 16 pound corgi socks and other merchandise.  It seems like a ton of money, enough to float whole parts of England's economy all by itself, until you consider that Harry and Meghan's wedding cost 43 million pounds all by itself.  Call it a wash.

In Sandra Bullock's perfect world, she'd still be at the castle, not sitting on the bed trying in vain to "find a place for dinner that won't be crawling with tourists."  She'd have done the audio tour and would be there, speaker pressed to her ear, soaking up Royals information, and maybe riding a jet ski or kayaking, just for good measure.  Unfortunately, her poor sport of a husband, still stinging from what he thought was about a half-hour too much time spent at the Roman baths, enforced a strict no-audio tour rule, which might have been fine if he could shake the nagging feeling that Windsor Palace was the most Disneyland-esque historic site he'd ever seen.  So uncanny was the resemblance that even Sandra Bullock, diehard Royal Family enthusiast, didn't even try to deny it, actually laughing when that same husband, upon entering the grounds accompanied by a phalanx of tourists, cracked, "So which ride do you want to go on first?"

Sandra Bullock just announced that she's "so over finding a place for dinner," which means my indulgent writing time has come to an end.  She's still got to do some re-packing before tomorrow's flight, too.  Something about "re-arranging (her) pottery."

Here are today's Royal numbers:

3 -- separate trains required to get from Bath to Windsor: a very relaxing first-class ride to Reading, followed by 15 minutes to Slough, where you "shouldn't ever leave the station," according to the station agent in Bath, and six more to Windsor where you may find, to your horror, that you have left serene England and are now basically in a suburb of London.

2 -- other passengers in the first class car from Bath to Reading.  Their combined age: 164 (est).

0.007 -- diameter, in inches, of the frites we ended up having this afternoon after learning that the George Inn kitchen was closed between 3 and 6, leaving us at a French place with a great location along the Thames but no proper chips.

54 -- suits of armor randomly placed throughout Windsor Castle.  I could be overestimating.  It seemed like they were everywhere.

5 -- little rental boats spotted floating down the Thames while eating vary narrow frites this afternoon, some driven by little kids.  Looked like a fun outing.

10 -- rating I'd give the MacDonald Hotel Windsor so far.  A real gem.  

My favorite part of the palace tour: finding out that Chaucer, in addition to being England's premier poet, was also essentially the King's general contractor in 1390.  He helped out with the building of the chapel.  Smart thinking, Geoff; always good for a writer to have a solid day job.   

We wrap this up tomorrow.  45 days later.  Are you ready?  Are we?